20 Percent of Seafood Is Mislabeled

A new Oceana report offers further proof that fish fraud is everywhere.

RomoloTavani/iStock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Do you ever wonder where the seafood on your plate really came from? Or whether it’s the species of fish that was advertised? New evidence proves you have every reason to be concerned: A report has found that 1 in 5 samples of seafood are mislabeled worldwide. And the mislabeling happens at every sector of the supply chain—from how the fish is sold, distributed, imported and exported, and packaged, to how it’s processed.

The report, released Wednesday by the conservation agency Oceana, analyzed 200 studies on fish fraud from 55 countries. It found fraud in (wait for it!) every investigation except one. The deception happens in different ways: for instance, by disguising a cheaper, farmed fish as a pricier, wild-caught variety, by mislabeling packaging, or by lying about the origin of the fish.

This deception cheats consumers, and it can also pose a risk to their health—fish full of mercury, for instance, might be subbed in for another variety, unbeknownst to the buyer. 

Here are some of the report’s highlights, via Oceana:

  • The average rate of fish fraud in the United States is 28 percent, according to studies released since 2014.
  • In cases where a different fish was substituted for another, more than half the samples were a species that posed a health risk to consumers. 
  • Sixty-five percent of the studies showed clear evidence that there was an economic motivation for mislabeling seafood.
  • You’re probably eating more catfish than you realize: Asian catfish has been substituted and sold as 18 different types of fish. The three most common types of fish used as substitutes worldwide were Asian catfish, hake, and escolar.

Not all the news is bad, however. The report highlighted that at least in the European Union, the fight against seafood fraud seems to be working. Beginning in 2010, the European Union began requiring catch documentation for all imported seafood and enacted stringent labeling and traceability requirements. The measures seem to be having an effect: Oceana found that between 2011 and 2015, overall fraud rates decreased from 23 percent to 8 percent, a low for the region.

This map from Oceana’s report shows places where seafood fraud is happening. Clicking on each fish shows a summary of each study the agency analyzed (the darker the color of the fish, the more severe the mislabeling):

For more on how fishermen are using tech to fight back against fish fraud, read this piece and listen to our Bite episode “Fishy Business” here.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate